Seminar series

Remigration of immigrants and reattraction of emigrants in the Netherlands, Spain, and Japan 1985-2025: What does this mean for liberalism? 

Speaker: Michael Sharpe, York College and The Graduate Center, The City University of New York and Malmö City Guest Professor of Migration Studies, Malmö University
Abstract: This paper examines state remigration policies or “pay to go schemes” for select legally resident unemployed immigrant communities and their families in the Netherlands, Japan, and Spain. They follow institutional patterns of historic emigration that legitimize boundaries of national belonging and shift with economic and societal pressures. The “symbolic politics” and rhetoric surrounding remigration policies provide a litmus test for comparing reethnicization (reinforcing ties with emigrants across foreign born generations), deethnicization (easing access for all immigrants) (Joppke, 2005), and combined iterations thereof in the Netherland, Japan, and Spain. While Dutch citizenship has become easier to obtain for overseas former Dutch citizens, a recently ended remigration program has been instituted for unemployed and ageing “ethnic minorities” and asylum seekers providing dual nationals renounce their Dutch nationality. Spain and Japan established remigration programs to cope with the 2008 Global Financial Crisis. (Sharpe 2010; Milly 2014) Although Spain recruited immigrants in the 2000s, particularly from Latin America, based on the ideation that there are closer to an idealized notion of an Iberoamerican nation with liberal citizenship policies, (Hazan 2014:373,381) it facilitates the paid voluntary return of nationals (non-EU citizens) and their families from 20 countries (mainly Latin American countries) with which they have social security agreements while simultaneously providing overseas Spanish citizens financial incentive to repatriate. (Schurr and Stoltz, 2010:63) The overseas Latin American Nikkeijin (Japanese descendants) that were since 1990 called “back” to Japan to work as guest workers were being paid to repatriate. These remigration schemes are a symbolic attempt to control unwanted immigration and demonstrate address of critical “ethnic” social and economic problems, protection of national identity, and respect for international law.
Date and time: Tuesday September 15, 12:30–14:00
Location: B706, Stockholm School of Economics

Do next-door co-ethnic neighbors improve labor market outcomes? Evidence from Sweden

Speaker: Ahmet Girisken (Stockholm School of Economics)
Abstract: This study examines co-ethnic peer effects in immigrants' immediate residential surroundings and asks whether next-door co-ethnic neighbors shape their labor-market outcomes. Detailed Swedish registers allow me to identify immigrants living on the same floor and follow their employment trajectories and workplace connections over time. Combined with an interacted fixed-effects design, the data enable comparisons among immigrants from the same country and arrival cohort who initially lived in the same building but had different numbers of co-ethnic neigbors on their floors. Preliminary findings suggest that greater co-ethnic exposure is initially associated with lower employment, although this effect fades over time. At the same time, it increases the probability of working at the same workplace as a floor neighbor. The more favorable employment and workplace-connection effects are concentrated among men, whereas women experience negative employment effects. Overall, the findings suggest that immediate co-ethnic peers create lasting workplace connections but do not improve employment prospects on average, with markedly different consequences for men and women.
Date and time: Tuesday September 22, 12:30–14:00
Location: B706, Stockholm School of Economics

Swedish family migration: Policy development and temporalities 

Speaker: Hilda Gustafsson (Malmö Institute for Migration Studies)
Abstract: This presentation builds on the core pillars of the doctoral dissertation Suspended Togetherness: Temporal Governance and Collective Waiting in Swedish Family Migration. The dissertation is qualitative and draws on semi-structured interviews with families who sought to live together in Sweden, as well as an integrative literature review undertaken for theory development. The presentation begins by highlighting key developments in Swedish family migration policy since the 1960s. Thereafter, it discusses how Swedish family migration can be understood from a temporal perspective at both the macro and micro levels, employing the concepts of temporal governance, collective waiting, and chrononormativity. The presentation concludes by introducing empirical material that was generated but not included in the dissertation to explore new analytical directions and avenues for future research.
Date and time: Tuesday October 13, 12:30–14:00
Location: B706, Stockholm School of Economics

Economic incentives and the return of rejected asylum seekers

Speaker: Henrik Andersson (Uppsala University)
Abstract: The return and reintegration of rejected asylum seekers is a growing concern. In general, only a third of individuals with negative asylum decisions are estimated to have returned to their origin countries in recent years. We provide the first causal evaluation of a specific policy aimed at incentivizing the return of rejected asylum seekers, namely a cash grant given to those who return to their home countries on their own. We use individual level administrative data from Sweden and leverage that the eligible nationalities have changed over time.
Date and time: Tuesday October 20, 12:30–14:00
Location: B706, Stockholm School of Economics

How cross-cultural assistants support Ukrainian refugee children in Poland
Speaker: Marta Korczak (Utrecht University)
Topic: Following Russia's 2022 invasion, about 350,000 Ukrainian school-aged children entered Polish schools, facing language barriers and war trauma. We study the role of cross-cultural assistants (CCAs), school staff who are often refugees themselves, in these pupils' academic and social integration. We focus on eighth-graders (mostly 14-year-olds) taking the high-stakes national exam. Our mixed-methods design combines school-level administrative data on exam results, foreign enrolment, and CCA allocation with surveys of pupils, teachers, and CCAs in 11 schools across Poland's largest cities, as well as interviews with CCAs. CCAs are placed in schools with greater need, but their presence shows no clear association with exam scores. Most Ukrainian pupils feel good at school, yet only a fifth to a third speak Polish with peers, and those from Russian-speaking homes are notably less integrated.
Date and time: Tuesday November 10, 12:00 - 13:00
Location: Ragnar, Stockholm School of Economics

Emigration behavior among second-generation children of immigrants in Sweden

Speakers: Wooseong Kim (Karolinska Institutet) and Andrea Monti (Center for Migration and Integration Research, Stockholm School of Economics) 
Topic: Emigration behavior among second-generation children of immigrants in Sweden
Date and time: Tuesday December 8, 12:30–14:00
Location: B706, Stockholm School of Economics

“The legal question is whether the claimant is assertive or not”: The contested role of medical expertise in German asylum courts.

Speaker: Kari Anne Klovholt Drangsland (University of Bergen)
Abstract: Medical certificates have long occupied a central place in critical scholarship on asylum adjudication. In this literature, they are often understood as authoritative forms of evidence of past suffering and persecution, or of risks of future deprivation. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in German first-instance administrative courts, this paper revisits the role of the medical certificate by shifting analytical attention from medical experts and humanitarian organizations to asylum judges. The empirical context is a series of appeals concerning refugees previously granted protection in Greece, following a landmark ruling by the German Federal Administrative Court that deemed return reasonable for young, single, non-vulnerable men.
In this paper, I examine how the evidentiary value of medical certificates is relationally produced within judges’ knowledge practices. I show, first, how the legal significance of certificates is shaped by procedural arrangements, particularly a statutory presumption that health-related obstacles to deportation do not exist unless substantiated through a legally compliant medical certificate. Yet judges do not approach this presumption merely as a technical rule. They interpret certificates and the law governing them as socio-political artefacts, shaped by broader concerns about migration control, access to healthcare, and the practical constraints faced by asylum seekers.
Second, I explore how certificates acquire meaning and evidentiary value in relation to the oral hearing. While medical documents provide formal support for legally defensible judgments, judges also draw on their own ‘everyday theories’ of sickness and vulnerability when assessing testimonies. The certificate, I suggest, works as a hinge through which different forms of knowledge are brought into relation.
Date and time: Tuesday December 15, 12:30–14:00
Location: Direktionsrummet, Stockholm School of Economics